I'm a fifty-something year old wife, mom to 2 grown kids, and the sole income earner. Follow along as I keep plugging away at daily life.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Where was my blood?

I went to get my blood drawn today for a cholesterol check. I got there a few minutes after they opened. A half hour later they finally call me back. I always have my left arm drawn and it's hard to find good veins in right arm. She pokes my left arm 2 or 3 time (and it hurt!) and then tried my right arm a couple of pokes, which of course did nothing. So, she had to take it out of the top of my hand.. and 2 pokes there! Good Grief! After she was done and my 2 arms and hand were all wrapped in gauze and tape I looked like I had been beat up or something.

I ordered the wrong shop vac filter from Sears and if I didn't want to have to pay return shipping my other option was to return it directly to the store. I figured 10 miles in gas was cheaper than shipping it back and having to wait to get a refund. Plus, the store had the one I need in stock, so I was able to pick up that and not pay shipping on re-ordering a new filter.

Ten days ago I got the rest of the wall board trim for our kitchen and laundry flooring picked up and ordered. They had to order the wall base board, but I was able to get the 1/4 round trim and transition piece while I was there. The rest came in yesterday so I took a bit of a detour on my way home from work. By the time I did that, worked my way through terrible traffic, stopped and got DH his Thursday burger and fries dinner, it was almost a 2 hour trip trying go get home. Ugh.

DD has been looking at senior prom dresses online (pinterest and elsewhere) and found one she fell in love with, so she gave herself a few days to think about it and then ordered it last night. It was $170, which I didn't think was too bad, considering I know DS's ex-girlfriend and her younger sister spent over $300 on their dresses. I told DD I'll pay her back for it - but it will have to be after the first of the year. We've got her birthday coming up and Christmas gifts to spend on and that takes up the extra money available until then.

Apparently, I'm getting some inheritance from my biological father's "estate". I use that term "estate" in the loosest sense possible. He had 2 small insurance policies - one for $3000 to cover his cremation and service (plus VA added $500) and another one for $2000 that his next of kin receive. My half sister is handling all this and she told me about it a few weeks ago, that the insurance company was sending her the $2000 directly and she has received the money yesterday. The funeral home owner tried to pull a fast one on her. Initially, he told her the funeral would be $3500 (for a cremation and small service!) but he apparently was the one who went into dad's house (very small town) and found the policies and then realized there was another for $2000. He never showed my half-sis the policy doc's, just made it sound like they were both to cover the cremation/service. After she left the state (or country in her case) he called her and said he forgot to get her signature for the insurance company claim, so he was just going to have his wife forge her signature, ok? She said no way, got mean with him and asked for the documents to be sent to her so she could review and sign. Well, of course he said he sent them and of course they never came. In the meantime, he suddenly has the funeral costs up to $5200! He did finally fax her a copy of a letter to his funeral home from the insurance company asking for death cert, etc so they could close the claims and send him payment. From that she got the insurance company name and phone number and called them and explained what is going on. Turns out the extra $2000 policy was not for the funeral costs, but for her.

I don't know if he listed her as beneficiary, or both of us (I'm sure just her) but she wants to split the money between the 2 of us. I told her to take out her expenses for having to take time off work and to drive there to deal with it all, but she won't do it. She said she got all the pictures, some of grandma's jewelry and is hoping to get her dining table when she goes back down there soon to finalize everything (which basically is her taking his 2 old vehicles to junk yard to be scrapped out). I did do quite a bit of online research for legal type questions she had over all this, so I guess I have helped out some. I got her the VA info and who to contact. Got her the info that insurance money is not considered part of dad's estate, so it can't be used to pay off his debts. We get to keep it. So, I guess I have $1000 coming to me. I honestly feel like taking it and blowing it on a fun weekend for me and my mom! She went through hell with that man and he certainly never took care of me while growing up. In 18 years all she got to help support me was $100, one time. But, most likely I'll put in it savings and not even say anything to DH about it. He'd have it spent before it even gets here, if he knew about it. This way I'll have a nice chunk to get my savings/EF fund back where it should be.